The present invention relates to the maintenance of systems, and more particularly, to the operator maintenance of systems having components with predictable life spans.
The prior art is replete with complicated systems having numerous parts that wear during normal use. These systems require periodic maintenance to replace worn components. Typically, these complicated systems require service professionals such as field service engineers to repair or replace the components in these systems that wear during periods of normal use. In a number of these complicated systems, the period of time that the system is not working or, working at less than optimum performance, is critical. For many of these systems, it is intended is to keep the system running continuously. A digital printing system is one such system. Minimizing down time is critical to the owners and operators of digital printers.
The prior art has recognized that it is important to count the number of use cycles that are applied to printing devices. One such prior art reference, U.S. Pat. No. 5,383,004 issued to Miller et al. (Miller), discloses a method and apparatus for normalizing the counting of sheets that are printed to compensate for varying sizes of sheets that are printed and provide a more accurate record of the wear on components within the system. However, Miller does not teach a system that will provide the operator with the specific knowledge of the wear on the components within the system, thus enabling the operator with the ability to perform maintenance on the system at optimum times. By not providing optimum timing for replacement of components that wear during normal use, the resulting prints are not assured of being of optimum quality. Therefore, the teachings of Miller have a shortcoming in that the operator is not made aware of the current condition of the numerous parts within a printing system that will wear during use.
One solution that has been presented is embodied in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/166,326 filed in the name of Burgess (Burgess), commonly assigned with the present invention. Burgess describes a Service Publication System that provides service related information in the form of Field Replaceable Units (FRUs). Burgess is useful in providing service related information for field service engineers and the like, by providing service diagnostics and browser enabled publications. However, Burgess relates to a system that is strictly intended to be used by field engineers and field service representatives and does not provide a system that enables a printing system to be maintained by the operator. While this system of Burgess is useful in providing data for a field engineer, it does not provide operators with the ability to perform maintenance without the aid of a field service representative. Therefore, on-sight maintenance for sophisticated systems is not enabled by the system taught by the Burgess application.
In view of the foregoing discussion, it should be readily apparent that there remains a need within the prior art for a method and apparatus for a system that enables operator maintenance without requiring the aid of field service persons.
The present invention addresses the shortcomings in the prior art by providing a system having Operator Replaceable Component (ORC) devices that have a predictable lifetime before the ORC devices have to be replaced. The system of the present invention also provides tracking of the remaining lifetime of the ORC devices. As the system keeps track of the remaining life of the ORC devices, the system will prompt the operator when the ORC devices need to be replaced. The preferred embodiment of the present invention provides tracking of the ORC devices in an ORC tracking table along with an automated transmission of the ORC Tracking Table to a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Page count or other additional parameters related to the type of customer usage are employed to create the ORC tracking chart. The concepts embodied by the present invention empower the operator with the ability to perform maintenance on a sophisticated digital press without the requirement of a field service person. Once an operator replaces an ORC device, the remaining life of that ORC device is reset and the entire system will anticipate the next ORC device expiration based on a different expiration parameter.
These and other objects of the invention are provided by the operator maintenance system of the invention that has a plurality of operator replaceable component devices within the system, each of the operator replaceable devices having an expected lifetime, determining a remaining life span for at least one of the operator replaceable component devices, comparing the remaining life span with a predetermined threshold; and responding to a result of the comparing step indicating that the predetermined threshold has been exceeded.